Thursday, December 29, 2016

[Rumor] Samsung Galaxy S8 Will Ditch Physical Buttons And May Get An S Pen Accessory

With all this Note 7 incident still winding down, Samsung is likely hoping to move past it with their next flagship. Currently slated for April, a new rumor (via David Ruddock) corroborates several earlier reports that the Galaxy S8 is finally removing capacitive buttons for software navigation keys.

These software navigation keys will come with 3D-touch like functionality. A physical home button and two capacitive keys on either side has been a trademark for Samsung phones. Ruddock further says the soft keys that will be pressure sensitive can be configurable/customizable, as well. As Samsung will do away with the home button and capacitive keys, the S8 will sport a tiny bottom bezel. The Galaxy S8 is also expected to sport the fingerprint sensor at the back and Samsung is doing away with the home button at the front. However, exact placement of the fingerprint sensor is not known. Earlier reports said that the Galaxy S8 might be the first smartphone to feature optical fingerprint recognition technology so that the fingerprint sensor could be embedded inside the display itself instead of placing it under the home button.

Samsung is rumored to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack on the Galaxy S8 as well. The company is tipped to introduce two versions of the Galaxy S8 smartphone, one with a 6.2-inch bezel-less display and a 5.7-inch variant with a curved display with model numbers – SM-G950 and SM-G955. Both the phones are said to sport thinner bezels.

Soft keys may be be configurable/customizable, as well. Removing the capacitive keys / home button will give the S8 a very tiny bottom bezel

According to earlier rumors, the Samsung Galaxy S8 will be suitable for VR out of the box, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 or Samsung Exynos 8895 10nm SoCs and pack 6GB RAM. It is expected to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in February and go on sale in March.